Mike Spence is suspending his presidential campaign. Yeah, I know, we weep and we mourn. “Suspending” means it is not officially ended, and he could crank it up again should the political landscape shift. Maybe Trump will be abducted by aliens. You never know.
Another of the specimens running for the Republican nomination, Ron DeSantis, said “liberal, soft on crime” policies were to blame for the mass shooting in Maine that left 18 people dead earlier this week. According to the CDC, in 2021 the homicide mortality rate in Maine was 1.7 per 100,000 population. The homicide mortality rate in Florida was 7.4. The winner, though, was liberal, soft-on-crime Mississippi, at a whopping 23.7. And number two is Mike Johnson’s Louisiana, at 21.3. Indeed, with a couple of exceptions, the states with the most homicide deaths make up a roll call of the old Confederacy. See America’s Highest Gun Death Rates Are in the South at Axios. Somehow I don’t think liberalism is the problem.
Speaking of aliens, the new Speaker seems more alien by the minute. To plumb the depths of his weirdness, do read What’s Up With Mike Johnson’s Black Son at TPM by Josh Marshall.
Video surfaced of an interview Johnson did with Walter Isaacson just after the death of George Floyd in June 2020 in which he revealed that he had an adopted black son, Michael. …
…I had only heard this story in passing until this evening when TPM Reader RS flagged something odd about the story. No African-American son shows up in any of the family photographs on Johnson’s House website or on his personal Facebook page. Nor does Michael figure anywhere in any of Johnson’s campaign biographies.
As I went further down this rabbit hole tonight I was a bit dumbfounded. Is Michael made up? Is he excluded from family pictures? I was so baffled that I went pretty far down that rabbit hole trying to figure out what was going on.
It gets weirder.
I was able to piece the story together from the introduction to the full video of the 2020 interview and a write up in The Advocate centered on the 2019 reparations hearing. In Johnson’s interview with Walter Isaacson it sounds like he’s talking about two 14 year olds, boys of the same age. But if you listen closely he refers to Michael at that age in the past tense. Michael was 36 in June 2019 and presumably 40 today. Johnson is 51.
Josh Marshall speculates that maybe this was some kind of fostering situation, and that the Johnsons never formally adopted Michael and consider him a “son” in an informal sense. But who the bleep knows?
I’m all out of gift articles for the month, but everybody should read Paul Krugman’s column from a couple of days ago. Johnson wants to raise the Social Security retirement age to 69 or 70. He wants to raise the Medicare eligibility age to 70 and keep raising it. He wants to destroy employment based health insurance by limiting the tax deductions for employers. He wants to cut $3 trillion over a decade from Medicaid, children’s health coverage, and subsidies that help lower-income Americans afford insurance under the Affordable Care Act. Tens of millions of Americans would lose health care.
And I have to ask, why? What does he think he’s saving money for?
And then there’s his extremist culture war positions. See Mike Johnson Hates America, But He Believes He Can Save It by David Corn at Mother Jones.
Please, Democrats, don’t hold back. Hang this guy around the neck of every House Republican who voted for him, which is pretty close all of them, I believe. There may have been a couple of absences.
In other news. It appears Israel has begun its ground invasion of Gaza. I think someday they’ll regret this.
"It appears Israel has begun its ground invasion of Gaza. I think someday they’ll regret this"
Sooner than someday. We don't have a "State" religion. Israel is no more a democracy than Gaza is. There is no two state solution. It’s all religions or none, as we claim in this country. There is no legitimate side to pick in Israel, both sides must lose. The magats love Israel because they want a Christian state in this country. They support a religious war in Israel, why not here?
"someday they’ll regret this"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nEGagsNNhDY&list=OLAK5uy_m6o7D222tBtDDnUNVvEhPAeQVKjcrIxyc
What is he saving money for? You don't have to look far (WaPo's had some editorials) about how our debts are accelerating. There are a number of reasons for it, Trump's 2017 tax cut among them, but our finances are spiraling out of control. Cut the safety net is the standard Republican response, or should I say plan, because this was the end goal of the tax cut. People saw thru it then.
Can't blame Trump for the Tax Cuts for the Rich; that has been Standard Operating Procedure for the GOP since Reagan. The primary reason has always been to make Billionaires out of Millionaires, but yeah, making things worse for everybody is a bonus for them, as it keeps wages low, which tends to "maximize shareholder value". And perversely – but not surprisingly – the GOP has used the resulting ballooning of Federal Deficits to bash Democrats who actually want our Government to function.
And I have to ask, why? What does he think he’s saving money for?
Every dollar "saved" by cutting programs that help people who are not wealthy is a future tax cut dollar. They say its about debt, but when has the GOP paid down debt? Democrats do that.
They won't be happy until we return to the pre-Gilded Age days when the wealthy paid no taxes at all.
"What does he think he's saving money for?", you ask?
Oh, I don't know, but let me guess:
More tax cuts for the rich?; give still more unnecessary money to our MIC?"; look in the county office’s basements and repair the old “Whites only” water-fountain and bathroom signs?"; buy jelly-beans for having the "coloreds" guess the actual count at the new "Jim Crow" election offices in the South?
Am I close?
Forgive me
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5WSulenOUb0
Sung by the master, Robert Wyatt.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sMUx_9_trGw
And I have to ask, why?
That's a good start. Our spineless media needs to ask why. In fact they need to ask why 5 times! I guarantee nobody in the GOP will get past 2 why's. That's when the gibberish will start and our media will assume their normal supine position.
Moral cowards.
Give the "Johnson wants this, Johnson wants that" stuff a pass. He's an inexperienced waif who's going to get circles run 'round him. He can want all he wants, but as soon as he tries to get anything his political acumen will be revealed. In other words: it could be a short tenure as speaker, and at any length it won't be productive. (Well, unproductive in terms of actual legislation passed/policy enacted. Gonna be a heyday for clickbait and Fox News quips though.)
It's always the same old thing – lipstick and pigs. Wasn't Reagan supposed to be a more calm and acceptable rep than the real extreme Goldwater?
Yes, homicide data gives evidence contrary to Ronda's claim. Our decreasing life expectancy suggests a lower eligibility age for social security may become appropriate also. MAGA Mike seems to see opposite of the evidence. My guess is his bible is missing the sermon on the mount also. Trump is finding the court system to follow a different way of thinking, one that is more evidenced based and not based on fraud.
I remember when republicans would rant about Sharia Law. Now the seem to favor politics and courts that are not based on evidence and reason. How strange.
Mike Jr. eh? So Mike Jr. is opposed to the idea of reparations, at least according to Mike Sr. (more money saved!). Mike Jr. might be an interesting interview if he can be found. Didn't take long to find strange stuff in Mike Sr.'s closet.
He needs to go to his local hospital in Louisiana and get educated in how hospitals get paid.
Now I know he is not fact based. (ADF lawyers don't give rat about facts). Someone needs to ask him how he pays medical bills, with a chicken?
The rwdominionists have been creating their own private reality bubble show for years and years. It is a subculture of hobby lobby and noahs ark theme parks etc. But the problem now is they've gone mainstream and have been enabled to take over too many states and federal courts and like all republicans rail against government while taking office and benefiting from power and money. The worst hypocrits of all time just like commie party leaders who love party doctrine for everybody but themselves while relaxing at their dacha.
So now they want to treat all of us like their deluded congregations and enforce their warped morality upon us all. Welcome to fundy bubble.
Pence, Johnson all of them want to preach to us while being nothing but political puppetry.
And for some reason the press wont admit that Johnson was chosen by Trump and every R in congress was death threated into compliance. We literally have a government by death threat now. And press/media pretends it is normal.